Fake engine noises make people comfortable

I was just reading a NYTimes article about how the Jetta Hybrid goes to great pains not to feel like a hybrid, but instead ’embrace the internal combustion engine.’ Okay, fair enough. But then I read this little gem at the very end about the all electric Golf,

But then VW went a step too far. Instead of allowing the e-Golf’s inherently quiet cabin to be a desirable evolution of VW’s brand character in the electric car era, the company embedded a speaker in the e-Golf’s dash that emits an artificial engine sound that gets louder as the car accelerates at low speeds. At about 20 m.p.h., the speaker is silenced and the actual sound of the road takes over.

Oh boy. So, apparently the sound of a revving engine has become so emotionally intertwined with the thrill of driving for some people, that VW has to go so far as to fake it.